


Hold onto your hearts (if you can)

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 10:45:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5536988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one talks much about anything on the Hunt, except for strategy - and even that isn't in much demand, really. It's a case of stop, drop, and shoot, shotgun rounds modified to house shards of obsidian in place of buckshot so they can kill the Others.</p>
<p>The Hunt is so old that no one is sure how it began - House Stark has maintained it since time immemorial, and the rest of the realm sends reinforcements.</p>
<p>They need more reinforcements, this year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold onto your hearts (if you can)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EssayOfThoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/gifts).



"Scare me," he says, and Sansa wants to laugh. How typically southern of him.

"I don't need to scare you," she assures him. "This is the Hunt - you'll be plenty scared without any help, trust me on that."

Southerners never get it, not until they've run their first Winter Hunt - Sansa's from the North, she knows the Hunt as well as anyone can, and she never stops wishing that someday, a southerner will show the Hunt the respect it deserves.

None have so far. Sansa's been helping run the Hunt since she was sixteen and her powers manifested, and in twelve years, she's never once met a southerner who seemed to understand just how dangerous this all is.

She had thought, maybe, that Harry... But then he had proven her wrong, and paid for his hubris. There are a few every year, torn from saddles and caught outside the circle of the firelight, and none of the new arrivals are ever careful enough.

The man standing in front of her is typical of the yearly newbies - his gear is all brand new, the puffy sort of coldgear that he'll soon find to be impractical, shiny and too bright. It's all in shades of bright, vibrant green and gold, too, which is no use against the shadows and snow - there's a reason the Stark colours are white-and-grey, after all.

"Welcome to Winterfell," she says cheerfully, watching him digest the very real threat in her words. "If you go just down that hall, my mother will direct you to your assigned room."

"You've met Loras, then."

When she turns, she hopes she isn't blushing - if she is she can say it's the cold, and he won't call her on it, because Willas never would.

"He really doesn't get it, does he?" she asks, because it's obvious - Loras is just like Harry, or Quentyn, or Joffrey, or any of the other young men she's seen die over the years. She hopes for Willas' sake that Loras survives this, but she's doubtful.

After helping run the Hunt for this long, she's learned to trust her gut. Her gut says Willas' brother is going to die.

"I've brought the new horses," Willas says, after just a moment too long. Sansa knows there's no passing the flush in her cheeks off as a reaction to the cold. "I crossed in the hill-horse breed your father suggested, and made a few, ah, adjustments of my own."

Arya would be better for this, because she's half a horse herself, but Sansa has been the one to deal with Willas for years, ever since they shared their first Hunts.

"Your new leg seems to be holding up well against the cold," she says, motioning for him to guide her toward the stables - she knows the way, of course she does, this is her home, but this is how they've done things for the past eleven years, and she sees no reason to change it.

"I had one specially made for the Hunt," he admits. "We've got khiomages of our own, you know. Not many of them, but they're there."

Khiomages are exceedingly rare south of the Neck, and everyone knows it, which means Willas went to particular lengths to be at his best for the Hunt. The knowledge makes her blush even harder, but he's blushing too, so it's probably fine.

Sansa would have made a prosthetic for him herself, if that wasn't... Inappropriate. If she made him a prosthesis, made him anything with her talents, well, people would talk. People already talked quite enough about Sansa without her giving them more ammunition.

"The Hunt will ride at dawn tomorrow," she says, letting him take her hand for balance as she steps down into the stableyard. His fingers are flesh and bone, not steel-and-spells, like her own, and they're terribly warm. "Everyone will have a horse, and hopefully we won't lose anyone this year."

"You will," Willas says, shrugging against the door of a stall. "But at least my horses will give them their best chance."

Willas' magic runs in strange directions that Sansa still doesn't understand, directions that give him a sort of... Not a dominion over animals, she's seen what that looks like and it still haunts her, but an understanding of them.

There's a reason Willas' horses and hounds are the best in the country, and they say his fragile little summer hawks are excellent, too. Sansa wouldn't know, because such delicate birds are not hardy enough for the climate up here, but she has heard, and Willas has sent her videos and photos.

"I trained this girl with you in mind," he says, looking half-sheepish and wholly embarrassed. "She's a beauty, and sweet as a nut."

The horse has a strain of Northern Courser in her, the silver-white shine on her coat is mark enough of that, but under the shine, she's a warm, rich, chestnut-brown, the colour of autumn.

"Her name is Whisper," Willas says quietly, shifting his weight from real leg to false. "In the Reach, it was an old custom to give a horse as a betrothal gift."

 

*

 

"Your horse," Arya says suspiciously, the morning of the Hunt. Her furs are dark, smokey grey, darker than Sansa's own silvers, and the waterproofing on her outerwear is a similar colour, shadows and smoke where Sansa is all moonlight and snow-glare. "Where did she come from?"

"She was a gift," Sansa says, smiling rather than saying more, and ignores Arya's hissed demands for further information in favour of nudging Whisper over to the team Sansa is to lead into the woods. Her team includes Willas, of course, and Lady is sitting neatly on her haunches beside Willas and his massive courser, Gardener. Willas' brothers are both there, Garlan who's on his fourth Hunt and Loras who's on his first, along with half a dozen other men from the Reach, and a handful from the Marches - Sansa is always given command of the Reacher team, just like Robb always takes the Westerners, Arya the Rivermen, and Rickon the Valemen. Uncle Bran has been taking the Dornish team since before Sansa was born, and Dad and Aunt Lya run the Northern teams, leaving the Crownlanders and Stormlanders for poor Uncle Ben.

The Reachers all notice Whisper, the shine of her coat brightening like a pearl under Sansa's touch, and there's far more good-natured teasing than Sansa is used to, directed mostly at Willas but a little at her. It's nice, even if it does peter out disappointingly the moment they set out on the east-north-eastern trail.

"Whatever happens on this Hunt," Willas says, riding alongside her at the head of the party - and rightly so, he's got more experience than anyone else in the team except for her - "I want you to know that I mean the gift as intended. If you'd like it."

 

*

 

They don't talk about gifts for the rest of the Hunt.

No one talks much about anything on the Hunt, except for strategy - and even that isn't in much demand, really. It's a case of stop, drop, and shoot, shotgun rounds modified to house shards of obsidian in place of buckshot so they can kill the Others.

The Hunt is so old that no one is sure how it began - House Stark has maintained it since time immemorial, and the rest of the realm sends reinforcements.

They need more reinforcements, this year.

 

*

 

Sansa's party - Reachers all, save herself and Jeyne and Smalljon - are mostly whole by the time she drags them back to Winterfell, a sleigh of wights for burning pulled behind the drafthorses.

Mostly whole. Three dead, of seventeen. Of the fourteen left alive, only three are uninjured.

Sansa, Jeyne, and Smalljon. Fucking southerners.

Sansa's false arm is a mess - khiomage or not, she's not a being of pure winter like the Others, and their magics are perfectly capable of overpowering hers, especially when she's more worried about getting her firesteel sword through a goddamn wight's frost-hardened skin than the structural integrity of her prosthetic arm. She's tried a few repairs, but she has little enough magic to spare, what with having to monitor the freezes she's laid on the Reachers' injuries, to keep them in stasis until she can get them home to Winterfell, to the healers, without causing frostbite.

She's done that before. She's seen the blackened scars that still mark Willas' leg above his prosthesis, Quentyn's face beside the red burn-scars, and now Loras, with his face so similar to Willas' and his distressing confidence, who is barely clinging to his horse under his own steam.

They can't tie him on, in case the knots in the ropes freeze over. Sansa has the finesse of skill to unwind ice and frost even from silk-weave rope, but she's using all her talents on keeping her guests alive, and neither Smalljon nor Jeyne have the natural affinity necessary for fiddly work necessary to spare the ropes, which they have to do, given the sheer expense of replacing the ropes that can withstand both the extreme weather and their magic.

So Loras has to hold on, or die. Sansa can see it in him that he's going to fall soon, and it pains her to admit that she's halfway hoping for it - she's seen enough of this to know that there are few ways to die worse than of frostburn, the strange, cold-bubbling wounds inflicted by the Others' cursed blades.

She's almost of a mind to end Loras' misery, to curl cold into his lungs and heart and ease his way, but she can't bring herself to do it. Again, neither Jeyne nor Smalljon have the finesse to do it without being found out, and Sansa doesn't know how she'd ever look Willas in the eye, knowing that she killed his brother.

And besides - she and Jeyne and Smalljon have all been merciful before, it's one of the major downsides of their duties to the Hunt. Every year, it seems like they have to be merciful to more and more people, and every year, it stings just the same as the year before - she couldn't ask that of Jeyne or of Smalljon. It's the kind of thing that weighs too heavily on the soul to be anything other than a personal choice.

 

*

 

  
She stirs from her post on the outskirts of the fire's light when she hears someone rustling near the infirmary - or, rather, the tent holding their two worst injured party members, Loras and Arys Oakheart. Sansa has had Arys on three hunts now, and while she doesn't like him very much, she also hates to see him suffer any longer.

If there's already someone there, she might be able to ease Arys' way and make it look like he simply died in his sleep. She could just be another concerned friend, comforting a companion and brother-in-arms just like anyone else.

But it's not just anyone else, when she slips through the flaps. It's Willas, and Garlan, and Loras' head is cradled in Willas' lap.

Willas' magic shines green-gold, just like Sansa's shines grey-white. There are tears on his cheeks and Garlan's alike, catching the light of the magic tucked between his caged and nested fingers, just above Loras' chest.

"Will it hurt him?" Garlan asks, his hands shaking from the cold, his voice steady despite his obvious distress. "This... Mercy of yours?"

"I've only ever done it for animals before," Willas says, thin-voiced and hollow-eyed with grief and guilt. "But I don't think so. It shouldn't hurt him. I- No. It won't hurt him."

"I can make sure of it, if you'd like," Sansa says quietly, making herself known at last. "A moment of numbness, and then peace. If you'd like."

Willas' mouth is slack in horror as she approaches, pausing only to brush her fingers over his jaw before setting her hands flat to Loras' chest - there it is, slow breath and slow heart, the cold burning him out until he's just a husk. Willas' magic casts queer shadows over her hands, over his face, but Garlan's shines softly gold when he raises it in a curled palm.

"Anything," Garlan says, "to spare him more of this."

She guides Willas' hand down to Loras' chest, because this is his right, not hers, and ensures that Loras is too cold to feel any pain.

 

*

 

Once the brothers Tyrell are gone to wrap Loras in a shroud, one sent by their aunt the pyromancer, Sansa's lays cold hands to Arys Oakheart's broad chest, and in the morning, there are two shrouded figures laid on the sleighs.

She refuses to feel guilt over the relief of not having to keep Loras and Arys alive any longer - without the burden of their pain, she can do more for the rest of the team, and with less pain to slow them, they make better time.

She can't look at Willas, though, and wonders if she ought to stable Whisper with the rest of the horses who will return to the Reach after the Hunt.

 

*

 

They're the last party to reach Winterfell, and Sansa lets the steel-and-ice of her arm crumble in her sleeve as she rides under the gates. Already, the household are rushing forward to take the sleighs, to help her injured companions to the healers, to take and stable the horses, to-

Mum catches her, just as her legs give out. Mum's a hydromage, from the Riverlands, and not well suited to the Hunt, but she's the best damn steward and host in the whole of Westeros. If she's free to greet Sansa, then they must be very late back, compared with everyone else.

"They're stronger," she says to Dad, when he rushes forward to help Mum get her inside. "They attacked us by firelight."

There's no daylight at this time of the year, not this far North, and the moon waxes and wanes seemingly on a whim, but firelight has always meant safety. If even that is gone, then maybe Sansa's romantic adventures don't matter very much at all.

 

*

 

"It seems," Luwin says, handing Sansa a neatly bound report, compiled from the interviews with her surviving party members, and from the information gleaned from what of their supplies were used, "that one among your party was frost-ridden, and that's how the Others could breach the firelight."

"Arys," Sansa sighs, shaking his head. Frost-ridden is the name given to anyone who carries a shard of an Other's blade inside them, having survived frostburn, just as Arys Oakheart had two years previously. "The bastard - he knew, didn't he?"

"Like as not," Luwin agrees, shaking his head in disgust. "At least we know the Others aren't coming stronger. Better a molehill than a mountain, my lady."

Because of Arys Oakheart's foolhardiness, Sansa lost five members of her party, and came home as injured herself as any of the southerners - not that she'd noticed it, until she'd gotten to Winterfell and the adrenaline wore off, but she took a nasty wight-bite on her leg that was going to scar, the sort of bite which would like as not leave her with a limp - and without any sort of reliable intel as to the Others' movements.

Luwin leaves her to her spells, woven into small silver bars and stainless steel rods, held together by frost that never melts, unless she lets it. It never takes her long to remake an arm for herself, even one-handed as she is without a prosthetic, even distracted as she is now.

If she had paid more attention to her team, if she had just noticed that there was something wrong with Arys, then Willas might still have his brother.

 

*

 

There's a window in the library which overlooks the yard, affording an excellent view of the open front of the smithy. Mikken is a spellsmith, a metallomage of some sort, and with the help of some of the visiting southerners, he's been making a slew of new prostheses, all to be ready for the departing Hunters as they leave.

Willas' leg is a low priority - his body is already attuned to the spells, and he has a baseplate attached to his thigh, which is an advantage over most of the others. Sansa's never had a permanent arm made, always relying on her own skill to keep herself capable, but watching Mikken work, she's tempted, now.

The only wood that would work against the balance of her own magic is weirwood, though, and she doesn't want to risk that - everyone knows that weirwood is a seer-wood, and the very last thing Sansa needs is dreams of the future to match her dreams in Lady's mind.

Sansa sits in the window in the library every day and watches, because Willas seems to be as interested in the smithing process as she is herself, and sitting here allows her to watch him without being caught out.

So of course Arya catches her out.

Arya's boots, when she tucks herself into the opposite corner of the windowledge, look like they might once have belonged to Uncle Ben, but her leggings are clearly brand new, and given the technically perfect but nightmarishly coloured knit of them, they were a gift from colourblind Aunt Lya.

"I know what you did," Arya says, tugging her legs up to rest her chin on her knees. "And he will too, San. He's not stupid. You did the right thing."

"No," Sansa says, "I didn't."

Because the right thing was not to let Willas, whose magic comes from his Gardener heritage, believe that he was capable of using his powers to kill. The Gardeners were so tied up in the life and growth of the Reach that their magic  _can't_ kill, and while Sansa hadn't thought of that until it was too late, until the bloom of light in Willas' shaking hands was spent and she'd had to steal in around the warmth with icy tendrils to steal away Loras' last breath, she knows it now. And she knows that Willas will know. He's too clever to not realise it.

"Your Reacher will understand, San," Arya says firmly. "But you'll need to tell him before he pieces it together, else he might never trust you."

She can't tell him, and Arya knows it - Arya always bloody well seems to know, which is slightly less annoying now than it was when they were kids.

Arya doesn't say anything as she slides back down off the windowledge and disappears into the gloom of the library. When Sansa looks back down towards the smithy, Willas is gone, and Mikken waves up at her.

 

*

 

The day before the Reachers are due to leave, Sansa is settled into her usual place in the library, watching Mikken fit Willas with his new leg. It's beautiful, heavy oak and bright silver, and just as Mikken clicks it into place, with the same twist-lock that Sansa learned to use on her arm over the years, Willas looks up.

"Oh no," she manages, and then she runs. He knows her too well, and meets her at the door of her suite. The leg is obviously a good fit, and his cheeks are flushed, his hair tangled, and he's  _angry._ "Willas, I-"

"I know what you did," he says, an echo of Arya weighed down with pain, and guides her into her suite. "Sansa, why didn't you  _tell_ me?"

"How could I?" she asks miserably, sitting down because her leg is aching and because this is it, the end of whatever has been building between them all these years, all these Hunts. "You'd given me a  _horse,_ Willas! And then I- I  _killed_ Loras! I did that!"

"You spared him pain," Willas corrects her, but his jaw is tight - Sansa knows that look. It's the look of a southerner who doesn't understand the mercy inherent in a helping hand. "You- you helped him. I don't like that it had to be done, but I understand, Sansa. We couldn't have saved him."

Sansa has killed before - wights, Others, wolves and bears, more game than she could count, and thirteen good men, in eleven Hunts. Somehow, though, easing Loras Tyrell's way while his brothers wept over his body is turning her inside out in a way no act of mercy ever has before, and she doesn't know what to  _do._

"He would have wanted that," Willas says, his anger ebbing away as he takes the seat opposite her. "Rather than to linger on, suffering. I didn't- I didn't understand, not until I went to check the horses, and Whisper was with Gardener. That's when I knew it had been you, not me."

"Cold kills," she says, shrugging, feeling even more miserable now. "Everyone knows that."

"Whisper was a gift," Willas says, reaching over and taking her hands in his - she can't feel his touch with her false hand, because she hasn't had the energy to build something sufficiently complex for that since they returned, but she can with the real hand, and he's so warm that it startles her, for just a moment. "A gift that is yours, even if you don't want all that goes with it."

Sansa does want - which would be difficult, even without this  _mess_ of Loras lying between them now - but she can't accept. There is the Hunt, and there is his grief, and there is...

There is a spectre of Aunt Lysa, Mum's sister, in Sansa's head.  _Happiness is all that matters,_ she had said, right before Mum finally convinced her to see a healer, and Sansa thinks that maybe, she wasn't too far wrong.

"I want all of it," she assures him, squeezing his hands tight. "But not- not now."

 

*

 

The Reachers leave the next day, without Sansa, with Whisper.

"Someday," she tells Willas, when she goes to say goodbye. "But not now."


End file.
